God's Armed Forces

2 Timothy 2:3-4

Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

Paul admonished Timothy to be a good soldier of Christ. The word "good" in that verse implies "beautiful to look at, shapely, magnificent, good, excellent in its nature and characteristics, and therefore well adapted to its ends, genuine, approved."

I believe Paul was saying that when you go through hard trials, your outward appearance and inward character should stay the same. You should remain stately like a king or queen and no one should be able to see stress on your face and mood swings in your attitudes. In this life we will have tests, trials and troubles come our way, but we don’t have to allow the troubles to trouble us. We are soldiers and we must endure tough times.

The word endures means "to experience exertion, pain, or hardship without giving up." God never promised that we would not feel the affects of the storms. However, He did promise that they would not harm us though.

When you are in the military or armed forces, you are trained for combat. Soldiers have uniforms on that represent their country and when they enter enemy territory they become marked men, easily standing out to the enemy. When you are in military service, it is not unusual for your enemy to randomly shoot at you, throw things at you, spit on you and try to harass and defeat you on every hand. When people are in the armed forces they go through a different type of hardship because they are a definite threat to the enemy. They have been trained to destroy the enemy. If anyone can overthrow and demolish the enemy’s camp, it is the armed forces. They are equipped to win. They are trained fighters. They are master strategists at warfare. They are armed and dangerous and the enemy knows it so he does everything he can to impede, slow down, hinder, discourage, detour, weaken, harass, shipwreck, evade, kill, steal and destroy these special forces. However we must endure hardness, we are equipped to win!

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